Forgive a basic question, as I'm not familiar with IBM's line -- did IBM release a BIOS update or firmware patch that definitely supports Harpertown/5400 Xeons in this model? There are plenty of servers (ex. HP DL140 G3, Dell PWS690) that have a chipset capable of supporting them, but the system won't because the vendor didn't implement support in the BIOS. The DL140 uses the Greencreek 5000X chipset, which can support Harpertown according to Intel, and while the 140 will correctly ID them at power-on if installed it cannot proceed to BIOS or boot. (I might be confusing which model behaved in which way, but neither would boot an OS.)

Baiscally its a Intel 5000P (
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... 5000p.html
)
And with the latest BIOS update its supports, or should support some additional CPUs. Basically the 7976 -xxx M1 is based on the same board.
The 7976-LBU was shipped with a pair of e5430's. Anyhow contacted IBM locally... it turns out that VRMs do fail after a while.. So ordered a
replacement part.

smj wrote:

Forgive a basic question, as I'm not familiar with IBM's line -- did IBM release a BIOS update or firmware patch that definitely supports Harpertown/5400 Xeons in this model? There are plenty of servers (ex. HP DL140 G3, Dell PWS690) that have a chipset capable of supporting them, but the system won't because the vendor didn't implement support in the BIOS. The DL140 uses the Greencreek 5000X chipset, which can support Harpertown according to Intel, and while the 140 will correctly ID them at power-on if installed it cannot proceed to BIOS or boot. (I might be confusing which model behaved in which way, but neither would boot an OS.)

Fitted a pair of 2.66 GHZ X5355's 65nm and TDP of 120W
Had to do a downgrade due to VRM limitations. X5365's require 150W each
However: Added another 6GB of RAM set to mirror mode, updated firmware, PSU 12v RAIL TAP and an AMD/ATI Radeon 5870